When shopping online, what you see isn't always what you get. That seems to hold especially true for budget solid-state drives. Over the past week or so, we've seen an uproar over what some folks perceive as bait-and-switch tactics by SSD vendors Kingston and PNY. That uproar has led to a boycott organized by Reddit's /r/buildapc subreddit. The folks leading the boycott are vowing not to purchase or recommend Kingston or PNY products "until an apology or admission of guilt is made by either company."

After reading the linked article, it appears that the PNY with a different controller is a match for the original. However the Kingston with slower ram is not a match. Other products, such as the ubiquitous Linksys WRT-54G routers handled this by at least providing version numbers which identified models with less ram and different software. Kingston should at the least be doing the same to delineate models with such a significant change.